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Information Update - Spring 1994

Core Collection Development Project Update

Ordering and receiving of titles for the Core Undergraduate Book Collection Development: Project are proceeding on target. To date about 1,700 books have been received. As processing is completed, titles are placed on display in the New Book Shelves in the Current Periodical Area. Approximately 4,900 titles, have been ordered. The project coordinator and subject area bibliographers, with input from faculty, are identifying bibliographic tools for the second year of the project.

Two collection assessment databases hold promise: 1) The OCLC/Amigos Collection Analysis and Custom Cut CD (CACD) allows a library to compare its holdings to peer groups. The CACD has a standard set of 14 peer groups (Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and academic libraries divided by the size of their holdings) plus up to four customized peer groups may be added to the standard set of 14 peer groups to generate comparisons with institutions of similar size, mission, program or geographic location. The CACD allows the user to determine the extent of overlap and unique titles within its collection. It has an additional strong point. The CACD allows the user to eliminate "false gaps" by generating lists with the user's holdings matching against the peers to indicate differing editions. From this list, a want bibliography can be generated, 2) Books-In-Print Plus is a compact disc that has been available in the Library for three years. It can be searched by subject area and date so that the user can obtain a picture of the volume of publishing and the titles published in a given subject in a specific year. It is then possible to determine the percent of these titles the Library holds to determine the "intensity" of collecting in that subject area. If the title has been reviewed in a publication owned by Bowker, the vendor of the BlP-Plus CD, the review is available on the disk.

For the second year of the Core Undergraduate Book Collection Development, the first method of creating want lists is most promising. It allows the Library to compare itself to institutions of comparable size and to those whose holdings in a subject we wish to emulate. We experimented with a demonstration disk on the CACD during the first two weeks of March.